Georgia health insurance exchange More competition across Georgia Share this: By Carla Anderson

• healthinsurance.org contributor
• October 6, 2014

Georgia will have nearly double the number of insurers selling policies through HealthCare.gov in 2015 as it did in 2014. In addition, three companies — as opposed to one last year — will sell policies statewide.

More choices for consumers Nine insurers are participating in the Georgia health insurance marketplace for 2015, including four who are new to the exchange this year. The returning companies are Alliant Health Plans, Blue Cross, Humana, Kaiser Permanente, and Peach State Health Plans. The new entrants to the marketplace are Cigna, Coventry, UnitedHealthcare, and Time Insurance.

If you bought a marketplace plan last year, you may have heard that your policy will automatically renew for 2015. Even if you qualify for auto-renewal, it makes sense to visit HealthCare.gov and check out your options for 2015. With new insurers entering the market, returning insurers changing their plans and prices, and the possibility that you’ll qualify for a different subsidy amount in 2015, you may find a new plan is a better fit.

2015 premium outlook According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, premium changes in Georgia for 2015 will range from 7.1 percent lower to 18.3 percent higher. On average, premiums will increase 3.7 percent. The figures are for plans sold both on and outside the exchange.

Given that southern Georgia had some of the highest premium costs in the nation for 2014, the modest average increase is welcome news for the second year of Obamacare.

September 16, 2014 Contact: HHS Press Office
202-690-6343 New Affordable Care Act tools and payment models deliver $372 million in savings, improve care Pioneer ACO Model and Medicare Shared Savings Program ACOs part of plan to improve care and lower health costs across the health system

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) today issued quality and financial performance results showing that Medicare Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) have improved patient care and produced hundreds of millions of dollars in savings for the program.

In addition to providing more Americans with access to quality, affordable health care, the Affordable Care Act encourages doctors, hospitals and other health care providers to work together to better coordinate care and keep people healthy rather than treat them when they are sick, which also helps to reduce health care costs. ACOs are one example of the innovative ways to improve care and reduce costs.  In an ACO, providers who join these groups become eligible to share savings with Medicare when they deliver that care more efficiently. 

ACOs in the Pioneer ACO Model and Medicare Shared Savings Program (Shared Savings Program) generated over $372 million in total program savings for Medicare ACOs.  The encouraging news comes from preliminary quality and financial results from the second year of performance for 23 Pioneer ACOs, and final results from the first year of performance for 220 Shared Savings Program ACOs. 

Meanwhile, the ACOs outperformed published benchmarks for quality and patient experience last year and improved significantly on almost all measures of quality and patient experience this year. (Please see the accompanying fact sheet for additional details.)

“We all have a stake in improving the quality of care we receive, while spending our dollars more wisely,” Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell said.  “It’s good for businesses, for our middle class, and for our country's global competitiveness.  That’s why at HHS we are committed to partnering across sectors to make progress."

This news comes as historically slow growth in health care costs is continuing.  Health care prices are rising at their lowest rates in nearly 50 years, Medicare spending per beneficiary is currently falling outright, and, according to a major annual survey released last week, employer premiums for family coverage grew just 3.0 percent in 2014, tied with 2010 for the lowest on record back to 1999. 

Since passage of the Affordable Care Act, more than 360 Medicare ACOs have been established in 47 states, serving over 5.6 million Americans with Medicare.  Medicare ACOs are groups of providers and suppliers of services that work together to coordinate care for the Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) beneficiaries they serve and achieve program goals.

ACOs represent one part of a comprehensive series of initiatives and programs in the Affordable Care Act that are designed to lower costs and improve care by advancing three key strategies for improving care while investing dollars more wisely: incentives, tools, and information. 

Incentives
We are interested in advancing efforts to strengthen incentives to reward higher value care rather than higher volume of care.  The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, created by the Affordable Care Act, is testing new models of care in two of the biggest health insurance plans in the world – Medicare and Medicaid.  One example is ACOs, where groups of health care providers receive a financial incentive for coordinating care delivery.  As we announced today, they are already seeing success.  By working with state and private partners, we can drive more improvement through supporting payment models that reward higher quality care. 

Tools  
We recognize that giving providers and states the tools and capacity for change in the health care delivery system is crucial to the success of these efforts.  The HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and CMS are managing $27 billion in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and other sources to promote the adoption of electronic health records (EHR) in hospitals and doctor’s offices.  More than 75 percent of eligible health care professionals, and over 90 percent of eligible hospitals, have already qualified for EHR incentive payments for using certified EHR technology to meet the objectives and measures of the program.

And HHS is providing technical assistance and grants in areas such as practice design and transformation, supporting states in leveraging state-wide alignment towards value in health spending, and recruiting and training a world-class health care workforce.  

Information
The more we empower doctors and patients with information, the better choices they are able to make about their care.  HHS has set out to improve the flow of information for consumers, providers, and payers by, for example, releasing more Medicare data, and supporting the ability of health information technology systems to talk to each other for patients’ benefit.  

For fact sheets on Pioneer ACO Model and Medicare Shared Savings Program ACOs results, and delivering better care at lower cost, please visit: http://www.cms.gov/Newsroom/Search-Results/index.html?filter=Fact%20Sheets

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 12, 2014 Contact: HRSA Press Office
​301-443-3376 HHS awards more than $295 million in Affordable Care Act funds to increase access to primary care at health centers Funding creates an estimated 4,750 new jobs; Helps newly insured access care

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell announced today $295 million in Affordable Care Act funding to 1,195 health centers in every U.S. State, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Pacific Basin to expand primary care services.

Today’s awards enable  health centers to increase access to comprehensive primary health care services by hiring an estimated 4,750 new staff including new health care providers, staying open for longer hours, and expanding the care they provide to include new services such as oral health, behavioral health, pharmacy, and vision services.  These investments will help health centers reach an estimated 1.5 million new patients nationwide, including over 137,000 oral health patients and more than 38,000 mental and substance abuse patients.

“Health centers are a key part of how the Affordable Care Act is working to improve access to care for millions of Americans,” said Secretary Burwell. “These funds will enable health centers to provide high-quality primary health care to more people including the newly insured, many of whom may be accessing primary care for the first time.”

Health centers are helping to implement the Affordable Care Act, not only as providers of care but also by linking individuals to coverage through outreach and enrollment in the Health Insurance Marketplace.  Recent statistics show that health centers provided enrollment assistance to more than 6 million people over the last year.  “Health centers provide comprehensive primary and preventive services in their communities” said HRSA Administrator Mary K. Wakefield, Ph.D., R.N. “Today’s awards will be used to expand access to care, to the people that need it most.” Today, nearly 1,300 health centers operate more than 9,200 service delivery sites that provide care to over 21.7 million patients. Since the start of this Administration, health centers have increased the number of patients served by health centers by more than 4.5 million people. 

To see a list of award winners, visit www.hrsa.gov/about/news/2014tables/expandedservices/. 

To learn more about the Affordable Care Act and Community Health Centers, visit http://bphc.hrsa.gov/about/healthcenterfactsheet.pdf. 

To learn more about HRSA’s Community Health Center Program, visit http://bphc.hrsa.gov/about/index.html.  

To find a health center in your area, visit http://findahealthcenter.hrsa.gov.